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Social Media News | The Professor’s Pick

This week, Twitter launched a new consulting tool to encourage more advertisers to its platform. The Official Partner Program uses trusted third parties from Twitter’s Certified Program and its Marketing Platform Partner program, to help advertisers make the most of its valuable data.

By pairing businesses with partners such as IBM, it is hoped that advertisers will be better placed to make informed decisions about their social marketing efforts. As part of the launch, Twitter has also created a new website to help advertisers find a suitable partner: https://partners.twitter.com/search.

According to a Twitter blog post, Twitter Official Partners can help marketers, advertisers and brands to increase campaign performance, gain deep insights, and market more efficiently.

Commenting on the initiative, an IBM spokesman said: “We believe in the transformative power of Twitter data for businesses, and are excited to be a Twitter Official Partner. With our deep industry and technology expertise, we’re prepared to help the modern enterprise capture the knowledge of social data and turn it into actionable results”.

Pinterest reveals the design of its ‘buy button’

Image sharing site Pinterest revealed a detailed mock-up of how the platform could facilitate sales at the recent MIT’s EmTech Digital conference.

Showing images of a ‘buy button’ which would allow users to purchase products from Pinterest without having to go to the seller’s website or app, the introduction of such functionality by Pinterest is not unexpected. With savvy marketers catching up to the e-commerce and advertising potential offered by the digital scrapbooking service.

While, at the moment, advertisers can use Promoted Pins to help facilitate sales, the new functionality, once introduced would take the shopping experience to a whole new level. For example, users could click a button to buy ingredients after viewing a recipe on Pinterest, or add items to their Amazon Wish List with a single click.

It is not yet known when Pinterest plans to introduce the e-commerce functionality to its platform. However, it is clear that this is very much a priority.

Facebook introduces encryption for sensitive emails

For the first time, users of Facebook can opt to encrypt sensitive email notifications such as password resets and other confidential messages.

By adding a PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key to their profiles, users will be able to send messages that even governments and the police won’t be able to read. The move comes as concerns about governmental invasions of privacy are on the rise due to plans to widen mass internet surveillance through the Snooper’s Charter.

Google makes it easy to check your privacy and security settings

Google has redesigned its account page to make it easier for individuals to understand what information is being held about them. While there are no new privacy and security options to choose from, users should find it more “intuitive” to make changes.

The new hub incorporates three sections:

Sign-in and security

Personal information

Account preferences.

According to an official Google blog “93 percent of people think it’s important to control access to their personal information, and 90 percent care about the type of information that’s collected about them. But only 9 percent feel they have “a lot” of control over it. We want to change that.”

‘My Account’ – the name of the new online hub – also encourages users to take a privacy and a security check-up to ensure they are happy with their settings. To check your controls go to myaccount.google.com/

However, not everyone is enamoured with My Account, with concerns still in place over whether Google will be transparent about who it collects information on, and exactly what information is being collected.